LOS ANGELES-He is still proud of his tattoo. The somber image
of Death's hooded skull and scythe tattooed onto the inside of
the deputy's left ankle in 1989 initiated him into a select fraternity
called the Grim Reapers. Then a street cop at the Lennox station,
this deputy has risen to a key position in the Los Angeles County
Sheriff's Department - along with other members of his "club."
The groups - with macho monikers like the Pirates, Vikings, Rattlesnakes
and Cavemen - have long been a subculture in the country's largest
Sheriff's Department and, in some cases, an inside track to acceptance
in the ranks. Senior officers say they began with the creation
of the Little Devils at the East Los Angeles station in 1971.
Membership swelled in the 1980s at overwhelmingly white sheriff's
stations that were islands in black and Latino immigrant communities.

A federal judge hearing class-action litigation against the department
described the most well-known of the groups, the Lynwood Vikings,
as a "neo-Nazi, white supremacist gang" and found that
deputies had engaged in racially motivated hostility. The county
paid $9 million in fines and training costs to settle the lawsuits
in 1996. But today, groups like the Grim Reapers are enjoying
renewed popularity among young deputies, who say the groups are
fraternities that bond on morale-building values, not race. A
new group - the Regulators - has formed at the Century station,
and even suburban deputies are thinking about getting tattoos.
(Wasn't there a vigilante group called the Regulators? WFI
Editor) Some senior officers say the groups provide emotional
support for deputies who contend with a grueling regimen of violent
crime and an 11-to-7 overnight schedule that strains family life.

The groups have their detractors. One deputy characterized the
Lennox Reapers as "cowboys," and another complained
that the Regulators were "acting just like the Vikings."
(Newly elected) Sheriff Lee Baca has long been a critic of the
groups, though he believes an outright ban would be unconstitutional.
He urges deputies to stay away from the organizations, saying
they encourage unprofessional behavior. Critics of the department
go even further. They charge that the stations with the department's
most troubled records - meaning the most frequent excessive-force
lawsuits and discrimination complaints - are home to the most
active deputy groups. And the groups are viewed with mistrust
by many in the inner-city communities. "They are generally
perceived as rogue cops who have often been accused of acting
in very inappropriate ways in the street," said Joe Hicks,
executive director of the city's human relations commission.
"It doesn't seem to be good for morale or community relations."

FINDING EVIDENCE OF POLICE GANGS

Some of the lawyers now suing the Sheriff's Department on behalf
of clients who say they were beaten, shot or harassed have demanded
that deputies accused of misconduct roll down their socks and
reveal if they have one of the distinguishing tattoos. In one
case pending in federal court, attorneys want two deputies who
allegedly shot a man to death to show whether their ankles bear
the Vikings insignia. (Ironically enough, police are usually
the ones demanding street gang members to show them their
tattoos, as evidence of gang affiliation. The criminal world
is virtually a mirror image of the police state, both relying
on violence for power. WFI Editor)

Kevin Reed, an attorney with the National Assn. for the Advancement
of Colored People's Legal Defense Fund, who worked on the class-action
suit involving the Vikings, thinks the deputy groups encourage
a pattern of excessive force. "There is a bond, not just
of being a fellow deputy, but being a Viking, that gives you the
comfort that no one is going to write the report that will hang
you out to dry," Reed said. One Viking tattoo displayed
in court bore the number "998" - the code for "officer-involved
shooting" - Reed said, giving the impression that such shootings
were celebrated as a rite of passage. Former Undersheriff Jerry
Harper, who was Baca's boss until he retired after Baca was elected
Sheriff, did not deny this. "It's a mark of pride "

But David Lynn, a private investigator who testified on the deputy
groups to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission - which is to address
the issue in a report due in April - has called for the names
of tattooed deputies to be cross-referenced with excessive force
allegations. Sheriff Baca supports the idea of such a registry.
"I cannot dismiss [the gangs] as a little club or as a social
group," Baca said. "I see it as the wrong message to
a public that desperately wants to be close to us, desperately
wants to trust us. Having a Grim Reaper tattoo does not bring
confidence in you as a deputy."

BY INVITATION ONLY

Although their total numbers are not known, the tattooed officers
are found throughout department ranks. Many have risen to positions
of leadership. Group members are said to be predominantly white
and male, though Latino members are reportedly common. (Many
Latino people, especially from Mexico, are descended from pure
Spanish backgrounds, and actually are "white" people.
WFI Editor) There are few black or female initiates,
group members say. "It's no more than some of the fraternities
at different schools," said the deputy who became a Grim
Reaper at Lennox. The deputy, who is white, was honored the day
he was asked to become a Reaper. His buddies drove him to a tattoo
parlor and gave the artist the secret stencil with the Reaper
icon. The tattoo was numbered and his name entered into a ledger
kept by a veteran officer. To him the tattoo "showed that
you were respected by your peers." The symbols are not meant
to be sinister, but the more forceful logos - like a bolt of lightening
- have higher status, he said. (Oddly enough, members of the
German Nazi SS also had tattoos of bolts of lightening to signify
their membership in the SS, which is how the Allied forces identified
them for prosecution. How much more hard evidence does there
have to be to prove that the U.S. Federal republic today is a
police state? WFI Editor)

Even Baca acknowledges the appeal of the gangs. He recalls confronting
the issue of Viking membership two years ago when he was a regional
department chief. He was meeting with deputies at the new Century
station, which replaced Lynwood. His superiors warned him to
be cautious. "I think there was more of an interest of protecting
me from what they perceived to be a backlash. Since I was the
only one out there voicing an objection to it, they didn't want
me so far out on a limb that my overall effectiveness as a chief
might be mitigated. Well, now I'm the Sheriff, so I'm not worried
about mitigation Don't like [the police gangs]. Never
have. Never will."

Today, some officers have told Baca they're thinking about getting
their tattoos removed. One of them, Lt. Paul Tanaka, was made
a top aide to the sheriff just after the election in August.
Tanaka was tattooed as a member of the Vikings while a young deputy
in 1987 - a year before he was named in a wrongful-death suit
stemming from the shooting of a young Korean man. The department
eventually settled for close to $1 million. Now Tanaka, a recently
elected Gardena city councilman with aspirations to rise in the
department and local politics, would like to disassociate himself
from the gang. "Paul doesn't have anything to say about
[the tattoo]," said Sheriff's Department spokesman Capt.
Doyle Campbell. "It is perceived by some in a way that was
never intended. He's having it removed. He wants it behind him."
(That is also what all the ex-Nazis said at the end of World
War II, but even though a tattoo can be removed, the attitudes
that led to its being implanted cannot be removed so easily. WFI
Editor)

It was 1990 police misconduct litigation that first hurled the
deputy clubs - and the Vikings - into the public eye. The lawsuit,
which asked the federal court to take over the Lynwood station,
produced numerous accounts of "Animal House" -style
thuggery. There were the deputies who shot a dog and tied it
under their commanders' car; the deputies who smeared feces on
a supervisor's engine. There was the map of Lynwood in the shape
of Africa, the racist cartoons of black men, the mock "ticket
to Africa" on the wall. U.S. District Judge Terry Hatter
concluded that many deputies engaged in racially motivated hostility
against blacks and Latinos. In 1996, the department was ordered
to pay $7.5 million to 80 victims of excessive force in the area
policed by the Lynwood station, and spend $1.5 million for mandatory
training.

Then-Sheriff Sherman Block said Hatter's characterization of the
Viking's as a "neo-Nazi" group was wrong, and said that
the Vikings were primarily a social organization. (Which is like
saying that the Aryan Brotherhood, a white supremacist prison
gang, is just a club. WFI Editor) The 1992 Kolts
Commission report on police brutality in Los Angeles said deputy
"cliques" like the Vikings were found "particularly
at stations in areas heavily populated by minorities - the so-called
'ghetto stations' - and deputies at those stations recruit persons
similar in attitudes to themselves." The report said evidence
"does not conclusively demonstrate the existence of racist
deputy gangs." Nevertheless, it went on to say, "it
appears that some deputies at the department's Lynwood station
associate with the 'Viking' symbol, and appear at least in times
past to have engaged in behavior that is brutal and intolerable
and is typically associated with street gangs." (If it looks
like a duck, and quacks like a duck, and smells like a duck, it's
probably a duck. WFI Editor)

There never has been a follow-up report or investigation by an
independent entity since. Within the department, Baca said, he
was sufficiently concerned about the Vikings to send in a no-nonsense
Latino commander to run the Lynwood station in 1989. He said
he sent in Capt. Bert Cueva "to specifically stamp out this
Viking phenomenon." Cueva "looked like Clint Eastwood,
and you didn't mess with him," Baca said. "He was the
right guy to go in an say, 'OK, folks, all this Viking crap is
over with."

VIKING FUNERAL: ARYANS IN L.A.

But when Cueva ordered the transfer of reputed Vikings out of
the station, four sued him for discrimination. The suit was eventually
dismissed, and in 1992, Cueva retired from the force. The Vikings
continued to operate. In May 1995, Deputy Stephen Blair was shot
and killed in the line of duty. His buddies passed out lapel
pins bearing the Viking symbol so deputies could wear them at
his funeral, said Deputy Mike Osborne, who became a trainee at
the Lynwood station in 1994. To Osborne, the Vikings mirrored
the race and gender caste system at a station where deputies had
to win acceptance from white male veterans, many of whom routinely
used racist and sexist slurs.

Being invited to become a Viking was considered a tremendous compliment,
Osborne said. "If you're hard-charging, one of the boys,
you'll be asked. If you've paid your dues and you're not an idiot."
Becoming "one of the boys" implied more than simple
fellowship, Osborne said. "You keep your mouth shut and
obey the code of silence. Any illegal acts you witness by other
deputies, you don't say anything. If you're asked, you say, 'I
didn't see nothing,'" said Osborne.

Osborne and his wife, fellow Deputy Aurora Mellado, retired in
1996 after Mellado broke that code by accusing her training officer
of fabricating or destroying evidence to harass blacks and Latinos.
The officer, Jeffrey Jones, pleaded no contest to felony charges
of falsifying police reports that August. The month Jones was
arraigned - March 1996 - someone shot at the Osbornes' home just
before midnight, as their children slept in the rear bedrooms,
he said. Osborne said he suspects renegade sheriff's deputies
were involved. (Terrorism in L.A.? WFI Editor)

John Hillen, a retired Army captain at the Center for Strategic
and International Studies, said the intensity of military life,
which parallels the law enforcement experience, fosters subcultures
of unit identity. "A lot of these subgroups can be as harmful
as helpful," he said. For example, Ret. Col. Dan Smith,
an analyst at the Center for Defense Information, said "underground
groups" that arise within military ranks often have white
supremacist leanings. Reports of such a culture in the Sheriff's
Department have led attorneys pursuing misconduct complaints to
try, with little success, to make membership in deputy gangs admissible
in court. "It goes to motive, it goes to credibility, it
implies a treatment of people of color," said civil rights
attorney Hugh Manes. "Gang membership has long been accepted
in courts in the context of criminal law. If it has relevance
for the criminal courts, it certainly has relevance for the Sheriff's
Department."

That kind of talk outrages tattooed deputies, who say the misdeeds
associated with the Vikings gave everyone else a bad name. One
such deputy called the tattoos a "harmless expression of
camaraderie. It's like a Marine Corps tattoo." The day
he got tattooed, three of his buddies picked him up and took him
to a tattoo parlor, he thinks in East L.A. The artist already
knew the tattoo by heart.

Sheriff Baca wishes deputies would just stop joining the tattoo
subculture. California Highway Patrolmen get killed in the line
of duty more often than sheriff's deputies, he says, and they
don't get tattoos. When Marines get tattoos, they use official
emblems, he said. "You ought to be proud to be a member
of the Sheriff's Department," Baca said. "Tattoo your
badge on your ankle, if that's what you want to do."

SOURCE: Excerpted from the 24 March, 1999, issue of the Los Angeles
Times, Orange County Edition, from an article entitled, "A
Secret Society Among Lawmen." Reprinted in the public service
of the national interest of the American people.

(WFI EDITOR: The discovery of "gangs" in police
departments has taken off like wildfire. For years members of
the black community and the Latino community have complained that
they were being mistreated by police, and all-white juries would
acquit the police of any wrong-doing. Now that evidence is coming
out that reveals that gangs have existed inside law enforcement,
the evolution of street gangs and prison gangs has to be seen
in the light of copying what the gang members were exposed to
when in custody. The war on the street is directly related to
the sense of siege of the underclass. Until that is addressed,
there will be no peace in America.)